Back to the Future

Just some quick thoughts on href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/international/middleeast/29attacks.h
tml" target="_blank">Andrew
Sullivan's belief that Iraq is now the new Algeria. He says in the
"Daily Dish" that:

The reason I believe things are dire in Iraq is pretty simple. The
evidence
is accumulating that the insurgency -- fostered by Baathist thugs, al
Qaeda
murderers, and other Jihadists - is gaining traction. That would be a
manageable problem if the population despised them and saw a way through
to a
better society. But the disorder and mayhem continues to delegitimize the
Iraqi government and, by inference, the coalition occupation. ... And once
the
general population turns against an occupying power, then things get
really
... Algerian. The key moment was probably when George W. Bush blinked in
Fallujah. That was when the general population inferred that we were not
prepared to win. It's amazing, really. This president has a reputation for
toughness and resolution. Yet at arguably the most critical moment in this
war, he gave in. He was for taking Fallujah before he was against it. I
cannot
believe the situation is beyond rescue. But this president's policies have
made it much much more difficult than it might have been.

During the April, 2004 fighting three things were critically different
from
today. There was the threat in April of a combined Sunni-Shi'ite uprising.
The
fear was that hitting Fallujah would stoke a Shi'ite insurgency. Since the
Sunnis were considered secondary Fallujah was spared. This is not to justify
the
decision, but simply to point out the considerations at the time. Today,
data
provided the Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc
(used
by the href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/international/middleeast/29attacks.h
tml">New
York Times to argue that fighting is spreading in Iraq) seems to show
that
the Shi'ite insurgency is a spent force, the result of a military campaign
against Sadr which culminated in August, 2004 combined with efforts to
isolate
Sadr politically. There were seven attacks in an Najaf province out of a
total
of 2,429 in the month studied.

Second, there were href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/images/040412-status
.gif" target="_blank">only
5,000 "trained" men in the Iraqi Army in April 2004. Today the
numbers are moving towards and past 70,000. A link to href="http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040920-1322.html"
target="_blank">General
Sharp's briefing on September 20 has many of the details of the state of
training and increased numbers. What is strategically different about the
Sunni
strongholds today is not only the loss of allied Shi'ite insurgent support
but
the growing availability of Iraqi troops to crush them. href="http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2004/n09302004_2004093007.html"
target="_parent">Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers said in an interview today that
Coalition forces are planning a 'solution' to the Sunni lawlessness in
conjunction with the Iraqi government. To the legitimate question of 'why
only
now?' one can reply 'because there were no Iraqi forces then' -- barely a
year
after the fighting and on the heels of the capture of the principal
Ba'athists.
Fallujah could have been taken in an all-American assault and be occupied to
this day by an all-American force; but rightly or wrongly, the President
chose
not to.

This brings us to the third and often ignored point. There was no interim
Iraqi government in April, 2004. There is one today. It's establishment was
decried as premature by everyone on the other side of the droit and
practically
over the dead body of Kofi Annan. Even today, as Mark Steyn points out, the
press can hardly bring themselves to ask Iyad Allawi a question, as if he
didn't
exist. Describing a press conference in the Rose Garden at which both Allawi
and
Bush were present, href="http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040926-094829-9253r.htm"
target="_blank">Steyn
writes:

On Thursday, President Bush held a press conference at the Rose Garden
with
Mr. Allawi. You know how these things go. The Norwegian Prime Minister
happens
to be visiting Washington and they hold a joint press conference and
Norwegian
issues aren't terribly pressing at the moment so the press guys ask Mr.
Bush
about prescription drug plans for seniors and increased education funding
while the visitor from Oslo stands there like a wallflower at the prom.
But
Iraq is the No. 1 issue in American right now, and they've got the go-to
guy
right in front of them, and what do the blowdried poseurs of the networks
ask?
... They're 6 feet from Iraq's head of government and they have no
question
for him.

So perhaps it really isn't important whether "disorder and mayhem
continues to delegitimize the Iraqi government"; or that Sadr is gone
or a
new Iraqi army is building. After all, these are events in a future that
never
should have happened, because according to a certain point of view, the Iraq
operation should never have occurred. No matter: according to that point of
view
it will fail. At least, that is what Saddam and Sadr told themselves and
what
Zarqawi is telling himself now.

The Candyman

Forty one people, 34 of them children, died when a group of people watching
the opening of a new Baghdad sewage facility were hit by three car bombs. Reuters
reports:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a U.S.
military convoy in Baghdad Thursday, killing 41 people, 34 of them children,
and wounding scores. In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his
vehicle near a U.S. checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and
a U.S. soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq
town of Tal Afar. The Baghdad blasts coincided with crowds gathering to
celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. 

But Reuters couldn't resist adding, "It was not clear if the event or a
U.S. convoy passing nearby was the target." to remind the readers that the
'resistance' may have meant well. In the very next line Reuters continues,
"The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed
to the aid of the initial victims." It was a crowd that predominantly
consisted of children. An amazing performance of journalistic even-handedness
from an organization whose web
page declares:

As part of a long-standing policy to avoid the use of emotive words, we do
not use terms like 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' unless they are in a
direct quote or are otherwise attributable to a third party. We do not
characterize the subjects of news stories but instead report their actions,
identity and background so that readers can make their own decisions based on
the facts. 

Critics have long criticized the American 'failure' to upgrade sewage
facilities in the capital as one of the root causes of discontent. Guilty of
neglect by Roto-rooter. And Americans were guilty of the crime of handing out
candy to kids at the opening ceremony. The Associated Press headline is Rebel
bombing kills 35 Iraqi kids; attracted by U.S. troops handing out candy

"The Americans called us, they told us, 'Come here, come here,' asking
us if we wanted sweets," said 12-year-old Abdel Rahman Dawoud, lying
naked in a hospital bed with shrapnel embedded all over his body. "We
went beside them, then a car exploded."

Hence the casual reader may be forgiven for subconsciously assuming that
Americans were substantively guilty for the carnage itself. After all, if
Americans weren't in Iraq, if they weren't on the planet, none of this would
have happened. But there is another possibility. A New
York Times article quoting a private security group's data shows that 41% of
all terror attacks in Iraq take place in 0.17% of the country -- a thousand
attacks concentrated in 734 square kilometers of Baghdad -- attacks which have
almost no military value -- only a propaganda one. It is imperative from the
terrorist point of view that their depredations take place, not in the
unwitnessed wastes of the Western desert, but before a global audience. The
Associated Press may have been right about the candy and wrong about the
candyman.

Police Action

The Strategy
Page describes an alien culture familiar to aliens. What may be war to
Americans in Anbar may be normal from another point of view.

Kidnapping has been a major problem in Iraq for decades. Saddam Hussein and
his thugs used it as a way to control the population. ... In addition, there
were dozens of criminal gangs that were allowed, within limits, to operate as
long as they did Saddam�s dirty work. ... These criminal organizations are
found all over Iraq. ... In most of Iraq, the gangs are restrained by tribal
militias or local police forces that can match them in firepower and violence.
But in some Sunni Arab areas, the gangs rule. The Sunni Arab city of Fallujah
is the most extreme example of this, a place without police or strong local
tribal authority, which allows al Qaeda (a terrorist gang) to operate freely.

In a way, the Iraqi situation should have been anticipated by any diplomat
who spent time dealing with the Palestinian Authority. Daniel
Pipes quotes a now-dead Reuters link to a story which describes the normal
processes of  "Palestinian government" in Nablus.

Some of the dead fell in feuds over flourishing rackets in stolen cars,
drugs and extortion. Some were "collaborators" said to have steered
Israeli forces toward wanted militants in the city of 150,000, the historical
hub of Palestinian nationalism.  � Distinctions between nationalist
militant and criminal gang activities have blurred as Fatah has splintered
into armed groups, many spun off from Palestinian security services disabled
by Israeli offensives in the West Bank. A regional Fatah official who asked
not to be named said 90 percent of gang lawlessness could be traced to people
still on a Palestinian Authority payroll.

But the working National
Public Radio link on the Pipes site showed that if the West Bank was bad,
the Gaza Strip was no better.

National security does not really exist in [Gaza], because the authority is
not really in charge of the order of the law here. There is a big increase in
the level of the crimes like killing and stealing and raping and kidnapping. I
would say that the Palestinian Authority is also in trouble with the
Palestinian people because of such incidents, because many people are being
killed or kidnapped or robbed, you know, and we all are asking for security.

The Washington
Post delivers this judgment on the state of the Palestinian Authority
everywhere.

Three years and five months after Palestinians began their second uprising
against Israel, the Palestinian Authority is broke, politically fractured,
riddled with corruption, unable to provide security for its own people and
seemingly unwilling to crack down on terrorist attacks against Israel,
according to Palestinian, Israeli and international officials. The turmoil
within the Palestinian Authority is fueling concern that the agency -- created
almost 10 years ago to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- is
disintegrating and could collapse, leaving a political and security vacuum in
one of the Middle East's most volatile regions, many of those officials said.

The relationship of Islamic terrorism to criminal activity goes beyond Iraq
and the Palestinian areas. Recently the Washington Times featured a story
entitled Al
Qaeda seeks ties to local gangs which described its efforts to team up with
Central American people-smuggling syndicates. No form of illegal activity,
however heinous is haram to those with a mission. Take drugs. The Front
Page Magazine alleges that Al Qaeda principally funded its terrorist
activity from the Afghan opium trade, something which its fraternal groups in
Europe have emulated with great success.

Al-Qaeda works closely with these Afghan drug smugglers to secure safe
routes for their shipments through neighboring Pakistan and Iran. But Al-Qaeda�s
assistance comes with a price: the group places heavy taxes on the shipments,
and often takes some of the drugs as payment, using them later to buy weapons.
Tactics similar to these were employed by the Madrid bombers, who, Spanish
authorities believe, used 30 kilos of hashish to buy explosives that were used
in that attack (which killed 200 people and wounded over a thousand
more).  The men were also suspected of having links to Morocco�s
thriving hashish trade, which serves as a source of revenue for Islamic
terrorists in North Africa and Europe.

The Asia Times has an extensive piece on the hostage taking business in Iraq,
with emphasis on the business. Sudha
Ramachandran exhaustively argues that kidnappings are less about making
political statements than making money.

It appears that local criminal gangs do the actual kidnapping. The hostages
are then sold up the chain to larger militant outfits, which use the hostages
as pawns and bargaining chips. Foreign hostages apparently carry a higher
price tag. Many of the abductions in Iraq have been attributed to al-Zarqawi
or to "groups with links to al-Zarqawi". This could be because a
large number of gangs might be supplying his group with hostages - hence the
many groups with "links to al-Zarqawi".

But a more plausible explanation lies in the way Islamist militant groups
are evolving post-September 11, 2001. Just as al-Qaeda has groups with links
to it, so also al-Zarqawi's al-Tawhid wal-Jihad with outfits in Iraq.
Terrorist cells and outfits with links to al-Qaeda have proliferated across
the world. What links these groups is a similar outlook and ideology. The
al-Qaeda-linked groups act under different names and carry out attacks on
their own. Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on militant groups, likens this
phenomenon to "McDonald's giving out franchises ... All they have to do
is follow the company's manual. They don't consult with headquarters every
time they want to produce a meal."

Even the hostage's final agonies are merchandised through tie-ins. Pravda
reports a land office business in decapitation videos.

A new video product is currently available on Iraqi markets - DVDs of
hostages' executions. They are sold next to porn movies. It was reported on
Thursday that terrorists had executed two Italian hostages. The video of the
execution is not available yet, although one may expect the video of the
American civil engineer, Eugene Armstrong, the killing of whom was uploaded on
one of Islamic websites, the Hindustan Times wrote.

There is a very big demand on such video recordings on the Bab-i-Sharji
market in Iraq. Salesmen play them everywhere, even in their own DVD shops, to
attract people's attention. They turn the volume on so that everyone could
listen to a hostage screaming before masked men cut his head off. The footage
of the execution then changes to an adult movie. The covers of such hideous
DVDs depict local popular singers, although the disks contain an absolutely
different kind of "songs," performed by the leader of the Tawhid and
Jihad group, Abu Mussaba Al-Zarkawi. DVDs are hologrammed with Al-Assifa
label.

The possibility that terrorists are just another form of criminal is not a
very encouraging, given that America singularly failed to the win the War
against Drugs. But a focus on its criminal characteristics goes far toward
explaining many of Islamic terrorism's characteristics, like its penchant for
recruitment in jails. Robert Kaplan
was very near the mark when he drew the connection between Islamic terrorism and
the coming of chaos. In his view, America is keeping back a dark tide while a
slumbering civilization bestirs itself.

The American military now has the most thankless task of any military in
the history of warfare: to provide the security armature for an emerging
global civilization that, the more it matures -- with its own mass media and
governing structures -- the less credit and sympathy it will grant to the very
troops who have risked and, indeed, given their lives for it.

One of the sneering mass media agencies which US security protects is the
Reuters wire service. It's editorial
policy towards describing terrorism is a study in languid aloofness:

As part of a long-standing policy to avoid the use of emotive words, we do
not use terms like 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' unless they are in a
direct quote or are otherwise attributable to a third party. We do not
characterize the subjects of news stories but instead report their actions,
identity and background so that readers can make their own decisions based on
the facts.

But then, Reuters were always too classy to be crime reporters.

The Fog of War

The New
York Times reports that violence in Iraq is 'sprawling' and 'sweeping' and
'widespread' and has the statistics to back it up -- maybe. James Glanz and Thom Shanker
report:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 28 - Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by
insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq,
in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside
the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private
security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own
network of Iraqi informants.

The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin
Provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in
the south, suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets
described by Iraqi government officials.

The "Times" source is the Special Operations Consulting-Security
Management Group Inc, an outfit based in Las Vegas which MSNBC
identifies as consisting largely of
former Army Rangers.

"If you look at incident data and you put incident data on the map,
it's not a few provinces, " said Adam Collins, a security expert and the
chief intelligence official in Iraq for Special Operations Consulting-Security
Management Group Inc., a private security company based in Las Vegas that
compiles and analyzes the data as a regular part of its operations in Iraq.

Damning. Or is it? In the next paragraph Adam Collins is quoted as saying:

The number of attacks has risen and fallen over the months. Mr. Collins
said the highest numbers were in April, when there was major fighting in
Falluja, with attacks averaging 120 a day. The average is now about 80 a day,
he said.

So what if the average number of attacks has fallen, part of the mixed
signals which the "Times" argues constitutes the "fog of
war"? Is it not undeniable that the insurgency was expanding and spreading as evidenced
by the Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc list of 2,300
attacks throughout Iraq this month, with 1,000 in Baghdad alone. And in other areas:

During the past 30 days those attacks totaled 283 in Nineveh, 325 in
Salahuddin in the northwest and 332 in the desert badlands of Anbar Province
in the west. In the center of Iraq, attacks numbered 123 in Diyala Province,
76 in Babylon and 13 in Wasit. There was not a single province without an
attack in the 30-day period.

Against this, the "Times" quotes those who argue that the
security situation is improving.

Pentagon officials and military officers like to point to a separate list
of statistics to counter the tally of attacks, including the number of schools
and clinics opened. They cite statistics indicating that a growing number of
Iraqi security forces are trained and fully equipped, and they note that
applicants continue to line up at recruiting stations despite bombings of
them. But most of all, military officers argue that despite the rise in bloody
attacks during the past 30 days, the insurgents have yet to win a single
battle. ...

In a joint appearance last week in the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Bush
and Dr. Allawi painted an optimistic portrait of the security situation in
Iraq. Dr. Allawi said that of Iraq's 18 provinces, "14 to 15 are
completely safe." He added that the other provinces suffer "pockets
of terrorists" who inflict damage in them and plot attacks carried out
elsewhere in the country. In other appearances, Dr. Allawi asserted that
elections could be held in 15 of the 18 provinces. Both Mr. Bush and Dr.
Allawi insisted that Iraq would hold free elections as scheduled in January.

Critics might argue that evidence from the Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc
make it hard to take the claims of President
Bush and Prime Minister Allawie seriously.  But are they lying? The
following table was constructed entirely from data contained in the
"Times" article, as modified by the graphic posted on their site. (Hat
tip CJR) The population and area of Iraq's provinces are taken
from the World
Gazeteer and a map of the Iraqi provinces can found at Global
Security Org.

The first thing to notice is that 2,139 of the 2,429 attacks took place in 6
of the 18 provinces. The numbers don't entirely add up in the "Times"
graphic but the discrepancy is small and may be due to errors in assigning some
incidents. The real hotbeds are Baghdad and areas to the northwest -- the
Sunni triangle. By far the greatest density of violence is in Baghdad, where
1,000 attacks have taken place in an 732 kilometers square.

Province	2004 Population	Area Size sq km	Attacks as per NYT article	Attacks per 100,000	Attacks per 1000 sq km
al-Anbar	1,260,200	138,501	332	26.35	2.40
Babil	1,454,700	6,468	76	5.22	11.75
Baġdād	6,677,000	734	997	14.93	1358.31
al-Basrah	1,916,000	19,070	87	4.54	4.56
Dahuk	496,100	6,553	1	0.20	0.15
Di Qar	1,458,500	12,900	6	0.41	0.47
Diyalā	1,397,500	19,076	123	8.80	6.45
Irbil	1,349,200	14,471	4	0.30	0.28
Karbala	731,500	5,034	76	10.39	15.10
Maysan	784,300	16,072	12	1.53	0.75
al Mutanna	537,700	51,740	2	0.37	0.04
an Najaf	954,100	28,824	7	0.73	0.24
Ninawa (Niniveh)	2,514,800	35,899	283	11.25	7.88
al Qadisiyah	924,900	8,153	1	0.11	0.12
Salah-ah-Din	1,113,400	26,175	325	29.19	12.42
as-Sulaymaniyah	1,677,500	17,023	1	0.06	0.06
at Tamim	927,200	10,282	83	8.95	8.07
Wasit	964,600	17,153	13	1.35	0.76
Totals	27,139,200	434,128	2,429

So everything checks out just as the New York Times article reported it. All
the facts are individually true, but Prime Minister Allawie's assertion that
most provinces are "completely safe" and that security prospects are
bright are also supported by those same facts. Such is the fog of war.

The Closing Door

Caroline
Glick argues in the Sept 23 edition of the "Jerusalem Post" that
the sole remaining hope of preventing the Islamic Republic of Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons is to put the ball in the air and hope for a miracle
basket, an act of desperation that would rank with Jerry West's 60-foot
buzzer beater in the 1970 NBA playoffs.

Iran this week summarily rejected the latest call by the International
Atomic Energy Agency to cease all its uranium enrichment programs. Speaking at
a military parade on Tuesday, where Iran's surface-to-surface Shihab-3
ballistic missiles earmarked "Jerusalem" were on prominent display,
Iranian President Muhammad Khatami defied the IAEA, saying: "We will
continue along our path [of uranium enrichment] even if it leads to an end to
international supervision."

US and European sources involved in tracking the Iranian nuclear program
have made clear in recent weeks that Iran is between four and six months away
from nuclear "break-out" capacity. This means that in the next four
to six months Iran will have the nuclear fuel cycle complete, and will be able
to independently construct nuclear bombs whenever it wishes. More conservative
estimates have spoken of 12-24 months.

Glick did not believe that any new diplomatic initiative would materially
delay the breakout. In order to illustrate the futility of further diplomacy,
she focuses upon the proposals of veteran arms control negotiator Henry
Solkoski who argued that diplomacy was the only option left because the
United States was too preoccupied in Iraq to take on Iran and because the
Islamic Republic's 15 uranium enrichment facilities were too hardened and
dispersed to be successfully attacked. With force ruled out diplomacy remained
by exclusion. But the cards left in the hand are not necessarily winning ones,
as Michael
Ledeen points out. Diplomacy had repeatedly failed to stop or even slow
Iran's nuclear program. There was no reason for it to succeed with Iraq so close
to its ultimate goal.

"This is more of the same, however you want to define it. We're not
making any progress. The UN and the Europeans keep saying the same thing every
three months. You wait every three months and eventually Iran has an atomic
bomb. Then you don't need to worry about this failed policy."

Ledeen also believes that even if the Iranian program were to be referred
to the Security Council, it is unlikely that sanctions on oil or natural gas
� the only ones that might have an impact on the regime in Teheran � would
be imposed. And even if they were, he says, "oil is fungible. Saddam
proved oil sanctions don't really work. So who are we kidding?"

By applying the same exclusionary logic as Solkoski Glick arrives at the
diametrically opposite conclusion. She counsels: don't dribble out the clock
three points down with five seconds to go. Go for the 60-foot jumpshot. From the
"Jerusalem Post" archives:

Sokolski states at the outset that the option of a military strike against
Iran must be dismissed because Iran's program is too far flung and its sites
are too hardened. That is, since it may well be impossible to hit every
nuclear target, it is not worth hitting any of them. As well, Iranian leaders
daily threaten that any military action taken against Iran will be responded
to in a devastating manner.

Yet, were an air strike on Iran to take out say, only 10 of 15 sites, it
would still severely retard the Iranian nuclear effort, buying the West time
to formulate and enact either a policy of engagement from a position of
strength, or a policy of regime change with the requisite credibility among
regime opponents that such a strike would inspire.

Heady stuff. But what Glick does not say -- though it would perforce follow
-- is that any strike would make it logically necessary to subsequently topple
the Teheran regime by any means necessary. A second Osirak would prove to the
Mullahs that they would have to use any nuclear weapons that came to hand before
they lost it, a danger avertable only by eliminating the Mullahs. Bombing sites
in the hope of delay would be like swimming into an underwater tunnel on a
lungful of air hoping for an exit on the far side. But the only man who could
turn the card was maddeningly ambiguous. President Bush, in an interview
on Fox News on Sept 27, reiterated his determination to stop Iran from getting
nuclear weapons in the most uninformative manner possible.

"My hope is that we can solve this diplomatically," Bush tells
Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" in the first part of a three-part
interview to begin airing tonight. "All options are on the table,
of course, in any situation," Bush said. "But diplomacy is the first
option."

What President Bush will do with the clock running out is anyone's guess. But it's three points down and five seconds to go.

Two Wars

Robert
Kaplan summarizes the real task before America in the coming years. It is
not to find "an exit strategy from Iraq", as if there were somewhere
on the planet it could hide from terrorism; nor is it simply to find Osama Bin
Laden as some, ever anxious to reduce the current conflict to a law enforcement
problem, would claim as a goal. It's task is to hold back the dark until a new
global civilization can find its footing.

The American military now has the most thankless task of any military in
the history of warfare: to provide the security armature for an emerging
global civilization that, the more it matures -- with its own mass media and
governing structures -- the less credit and sympathy it will grant to the very
troops who have risked and, indeed, given their lives for it.

And the dark is everywhere; in the vast, decayed structure of the Third World
where the shambolic post-colonial architecture has rotted away, leaving areas of
chaos the size of continents.

Indian Country has been expanding in recent years because of the security
vacuum created by the collapse of traditional dictatorships and the emergence
of new democracies -- whose short-term institutional weaknesses provide whole
new oxygen systems for terrorists. Iraq is but a microcosm of the earth in
this regard. To wit, the upsurge of terrorism in the vast archipelago of
Indonesia, the southern Philippines and parts of Malaysia is a direct result
of the anarchy unleashed by the passing of military regimes. Likewise, though
many do not realize it, a more liberalized Middle East will initially see
greater rather than lesser opportunities for terrorists. As the British
diplomatist Harold Nicolson understood, public opinion is not necessarily
enlightened merely because it has been suppressed.

Kaplan, who is writing a series of books on the US military experience in
different parts of the world, realized that Iraq was only a part, and not even
the best part, of the global war on terror. In Mauretania, Mali, Niger, Chad,
Ethiopia, Mongolia, Columbia, Afghanistan and the Philippines, Kaplan found
small bands of men who were remolding blank spaces on the map in ways unknown
since the 18th century. What they valued most of all were not "more boots
on the ground" but freedom of action. The freedom above all, to do the
commonsense thing. "Who needs meetings in Washington," one Army major
told me. "Guys in the field will figure out what to do."  Who
needed meetings in Washington it turned out, were the vast retinue of camp
followers, reporters and sutlers, who followed a great army to battle. Kaplan
writes:

In months of travels with the American military, I have learned that the
smaller the American footprint and the less notice it draws from the
international media, the more effective is the operation. One good
soldier-diplomat in a place like Mongolia can accomplish miracles. A few
hundred Green Berets in Colombia and the Philippines can be adequate force
multipliers. Ten thousand troops, as in Afghanistan, can tread water. And
130,000, as in Iraq, constitutes a mess that nobody wants to repeat --
regardless of one's position on the war.

What of that extreme pole on the cursed end of Kaplan's Law: Iraq? Writing in
the Weekly
Standard, Lt. Col. Powl Smith, the former chief of counterterrorism plans at
U.S. European Command and currently in Baghdad sees that campaign not as a
screen before the advancing vanguard of global civilization but as a battlefield
where the main force of the enemy has been brought to battle. Powl compares Iraq
to Guadalcanal, which depending on one's point of view is either exceedingly
ominous or optimistic.

In one of our first counteroffensives against the Japanese, U.S. troops
landed on the island of Guadalcanal in order to capture a key airfield. We
surprised the Japanese with our speed and audacity, and with very little
fighting seized the airfield. But the Japanese recovered from our initial
success, and began a long, brutal campaign to force us off Guadalcanal and
recapture it. The Japanese were very clever and absolutely committed to
sacrificing everything for their beliefs. (Only three Japanese surrendered
after six months of combat--a statistic that should put today's Islamic
radicals to shame.) The United States suffered 6,000 casualties during the
six-month Guadalcanal campaign; Japan, 24,000. It was a very expensive
airfield.

While Midway is enshrined in popular glory, it was really Guadalcanal
that  represented the graveyard of Japanese forces, the Island of Death
upon which Japanese naval and military reinforcements were dashed heedless and
seriatim, until there were no more left to send. But no one knew it at the time;
and when US forces embarked on a final sweep of the island they discovered to
their surprise that the remainder had been totally evacuated by Japanese forces.
The most popular account at the time, Richard Tregaskis' nearly-forgotten Guadalcanal
Diary is useless as a work of history, written too close to the
events and burdened by the misconceptions of the time, though it faithfully preserves the atmosphere of the early 1940s. Officers rarely use historical comparisons without intending some point and Powl leaves us in no doubt that he means Iraq to be the graveyard of the global Jihad.

It is possible that both Kaplan and Powl are right, as were the Blind Men of
India in their differing descriptions of the elephant. We are truly in the midst of a world war as far flung and various as any in history: one so large as to defy
description even by so talented a writer as Robert Kaplan . No one suspected
what lay beyond the door constituted by September 11. Not even the enemy.

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

-- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

The Road To Damascus

Just after Izz El-Deen Al-Sheikh Khalil climbed into his white Mitsubishi in
Damascus

a bomb planted in the vehicle exploded, ending his career. Khalil was member
of the military wing of Hamas living in the Syrian capital. The Syrian
government blamed Israel for the attack, characterizing it as "an Israeli act of
state terrorism in the heart of Damascus". Israel responded coyly, neither
confirming nor denying their involvement in Khalil's death. But the strangest
reaction of all was from Hamas.

The Izz el-Deen al-Kassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, vowed to avenge
Al-Sheikh Khalil by attacking Israeli targets overseas, the group said in a
statement issued in the Gaza Strip. "We have allowed hundreds of thousands of
Zionists to travel and move in capitals around the world in order not to be
the party that shifts the struggle overseas. But the Zionist enemy has done so
and should bear the consequences of its actions," said the statement, a copy
of which was faxed to the pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera, which broadcast
the message.

"We announce an escalation in the fight between us and the Zionist enemy,"
Hamas spokesman Sami Zuhari said speaking on Al-Jazeera.

But another Hamas spokesperson, Osama Hamdan, denied the al-Jazeera
report, saying Hamas would not change its strategy of striking at Israeli
targets only within Israel and the Palestinian territories. "Our policy was
and remains to conduct our struggle inside the Zionist entity," Hamdan said,
speaking from Beirut.

Experts believe the retraction came about because Hamas does not want to be
seen as another al-Qaida.

Hamas' hesitation is evidence that the cellular structure of militant
Islamism, meant to provide immunity against counterintelligence is also exacting
a high strategic price. The decentralized command and control structure which
freed cells to choose their own targets also allowed them to make their own
enemies. And make enemies they did. Attacking the United States, seizing the
Indian Parlaiment House, blowing up discos in Bali, smashing trains in Madrid
and beheading people of every nationality has had the practical effect of
multiplying the  foes of radical Islam and enabled President Bush to build
a global coalition against it. While it has arrogated to itself the power to
ignore every civilized limit, Islamic terrorism itself is ironically dependent
on their maintenance. Assymetric warfare relies on being able to do what your
enemy is forbidden. Terrorism, being militarily weak, relied upon legal
restraints, inviolate borders and traditional respect for noncombatants and holy
places to provide the shelter that concrete could not. Khalil lived in an
unguarded compound in Damascus, in an ordinary residential neighborhood, free to
plot the deaths of Jewish civilians. His armor was neither Kevlar nor
steel but the certainty -- until now -- that Israel would not attack him across
an "international" border. Hama's eagerness to limit the response to Israel
proper betrays a growing fear that borders no longer provide sanctuaries. In the
weeks following the masscre of schoolchildren in Beslan, the

Russian strongman Vladmir Putin announced his intention to strike
pre-emptively at terrorist targets all over the world.

17 Sept 2004 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning of preemptive
strikes on terrorists. His announcement came shortly after prominent Chechen
warlord, Shamil Basayev, claimed responsibility for the bloody school siege in
Beslan two weeks ago. More than 320 hostages were killed in the siege. Russian
President Vladimir Putin's comments are the highest-level warning that Russia
might launch pre-emptive strikes on terrorists.

Speaking in Moscow on Friday, the Russian leader said serious preparation
to act preventively against terrorists is under way. If taken, the measures
would be in strict accordance with the law and norms of the constitution and
rely on international law, he said. Mr. Putin didn't specify whether attacks
would happen at home or abroad.

The reader may judge for himself how respectful Russia might be of
"international law". But both Putin's warning and the Israeli carbomb attack in
Damascus are a warning that Golda Meir may have been wrong. She once said,
"there will be no peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians love their
children more than they hate the Jews". She forgot the alternative which Putin
may even now be thinking of. 'that there will be peace in the Middle East when
every Arab school is as secure as Belslan; and the Kaaba as inviolate as any
synagogue in Jersualem.' America must win this war before it is too late -- for
Islam.

Who Goes There?

Most visitors to the US know that not even a valid visa can guaranty entry
into the United States. Nor is America alone in this. Generally speaking, no
foreign national can enter another country as a matter of right.  Louis
Farrakahan found that holding an American passport did not entitle him to enter Britain
in 2002. Nor is politics always a factor: bureaucrats can act in arbitrary
ways.

One of Laura Bush's favourite British authors has been refused entry to the
US, a day before he was due to lecture to an audience of 2,500 people. Ian
McEwan was stopped by immigration officials as he left Vancouver airport, in
Canada, for an engagement in Seattle. The man who was last year invited to
Downing Street by Cherie Blair to meet American's first lady - who said she
keeps a McEwan novel by her bedside - found himself detained for four hours
before being turned back. McEwan, who recently won America's National Book
Award for his novel Atonement, was travelling to the US as a guest of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Officials there told him he
did not need a visa. But the immigration officer felt differently.

So when Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, declared he was going to
take legal
action to "undo the very serious, and wholly unfounded, injustice which
I have suffered" as a result of his spectacular deportation from the United
States, he appeared to be trying to refute the accusation that he was a Hamas
supporter, rather than to directly compel the US government to admit him, though
the second would would probably follow if the first could be achieved. "I
am a man of peace and denounce all forms of terrorism ... it is simply
outrageous for the US authorities to suggest otherwise." Islam has denied
being a Hamas supporter, saying that his donations have always been for
humanitarian causes like orphanages
in Hebron. Islam's had similarly been refused him entry to Israel in 2000,
before September 11. The accusations against him then and Islam's rebuttal are
eerily similar to the most recent incident.

Islam, 51, who changed his name after becoming a Muslim in the late 1970s,
was refused entry into Israel hours after arriving Wednesday. The former
singer said he was told only that he was a "threat to national
security.''

Israeli Defense Ministry officials refused to comment on Islam's case other
than to say that the Shin Bet, Israel's internal intelligence agency, had
ordered him barred from the country. The Maariv Daily in Israel reported that
the government claimed Islam had delivered tens of thousands of dollars to
Hamas, a militant Islamic group, during his last visit in 1988.

"Upon my return to London, reports were already circulating that the
Israeli authorities were trying to excuse their actions by linking me to
terrorist groups,'' Islam said in a statement. "I want to make sure that
people are aware that I've never knowingly supported any terrorist groups --
past, present or future. It's simply an attempt to cast doubt again on my
character and good intentions.''

Islam has contributed sums of money to orphanages in Kosovo
and Bosnia too. The US position is that while it can't prove anything in
court -- it doesn't need to prove anything to deny an alien entry into
the America. Colin
Powell responded to accusation that Islam had been unfairly treated by
saying:

"We have no charges against him," Mr Powell told reporters at the
foreign press centre. "We have nothing that would be actionable in our
courts, or in the courts in the United Kingdom, I'm sure. "But it is the
procedure that we have been using to know who is coming into our country, know
their backgrounds and interests and see whether we believe it is appropriate
for them to come in," he said.

"With respect to Cat Stevens ... our Homeland Security Department and
intelligence agencies found some information concerning his activities that
they felt under our law required him to be placed on a watch list and
therefore deny him entry into the United States," Mr Powell said.
"In this instance, information was obtained that suggested he should be
placed on the watch list and that's why he was denied entry into the
country," he said.

The shock power in the Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) affair lies precisely in
Colin Powell's tone: the cold determination to deny even the most prominent
persons entry into the US if suspected of terrorist links. For decades being
turned back at the US border was an indignity reserved for poor Mexicans,
Filipinos and such. Visitors from Europe and especially the Transatlantic
commuter set were spared these inconveniences, as were millionaires from Third
World hell-holes, who had the telephone number of a high-priced immigration
lawyer at their fingertips as insurance against such misunderstandings. Even the
Saudis could expect to be waved past immigration in the pre-911 age, courtesy of
the Visa Express program.  Joel
Mowbray wrote in 2002.

Three Saudis who were among the last of the Sept. 11 homicide hijackers to
enter this country didn't visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to get their
visas; they went to a travel agent, where they only submitted a short,
two-page form and a photo. The program that made this possible, Visa Express,
is still using travel agents in Saudi Arabia to fill this vital role in United
States border security.

But now men traveling first-class in bespoke business suits know that neither
wealth nor fame nor that immigration lawyer's telephone number can keep F-16s
from popping out of the dark and escorting their flight to Bangor, Maine, from
where the Mexicans might be allowed to continue, but not them. While Mr. Islam
is certainly entitled to pursue legal action and may in the end be vindicated,
the incident shows more clearly than any other that it's not September 10 any
more. America is at war in a way that it never was in Vietnam. This one is for
keeps.

Dark Networks

Vladis Krebs has a case study
page examining how mapping social networks and understanding their
properties can be used to take down of terrorist networks. Network analysis was used to take
down Saddam Hussein. The

Washington Post has some of the details.

The Army general whose forces captured Saddam Hussein said yesterday that
he realized as far back as July that the key lay in figuring out the former
Iraqi president's clan and family support structures in and around Hussein's
home city of Tikrit.

Following a strategy similar to that pioneered by New York City police in
the 1990s, who cracked down on "squeegee men" only to discover they knew about
far more serious criminals, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said his analysts and
commanders spent the summer building "link diagrams," graphics showing
everyone related to Hussein by blood or tribe.

While U.S. forces up to then had been preoccupied with finding "high value
targets" from the Bush administration's list of the top 55 most-wanted Iraqis,
Odierno said those family diagrams led his forces to lower-level, but
nonetheless highly trusted, relatives and clan members harboring Hussein and
helping him move around the countryside.

And the rest as they say, is history.
John Robb took at look at the September 11 network and analyzed its
characteristics. The Mohammed Atta network had evolved under Darwinian pressure
until it reached the form best suited for its purpose: to conduct strategic
attacks against the United States of America. Robb concludes that a cell of 70
persons will answer to the purpose, yet be sparse enough to allow its
members to remain in relative isolation. For example, no one member of Atta's
cell knew more than five others. Moreover, the average distance between any two
members was more than four persons. Crucially, but not surprisingly, this
disconnected network of plotters maintained coherence by relying on a support
infrastructure -- probably communications posts, safe houses, couriers -- to
keep themselves from unraveling.  Because security comes at a price in
performance and flexibility, Robb arrives at an

astounding conjecture: you can have small, operationally secure terrorist
groups, but you can't have large, operationally secure cells without a state
sponsor.

Distributed, dynamic terrorist networks cannot scale like hierarchical
networks. The same network design that makes them resiliant against attack
puts absolute limits on their size. If so, what are those limits?

A good starting point is to look at limits to group size within peaceful
online communities on which we have extensive data -- terrorist networks are
essentially geographically dispersed online communities. Chris Allen does a
good job analyzing optimal group size with his critique of the Dunbar
number.

His analysis (replete with examples) shows that there is a gradual fall-off
in effectiveness at 80 members, with an absolute fall-off at 150 members. The
initial fall-off occurs, according to Chris, due to an increasing amount of
effort spent on "grooming" the group to maintain cohesion. The absolute
fall-off at 150 members occurs when grooming fails to stem dissatisfaction and
dissension, which causes the group to cleave apart into smaller subgroups
(that may remain affiliated).

Al Qaeda may have been able to grow much larger than this when it ran
physical training camps in Afghanistan. Physical proximity allowed al Qaeda to
operate as a hierarchy along military lines, complete with middle management
(or at least a mix of a hierarchy in Afghanistan and a distributed network
outside of Afghanistan). Once those camps were broken apart, the factors
listed above were likely to have caused the fragmentation we see today (lots
of references to this in the news).

His last paragraph is crucial to understanding why the defeat of the Taliban
in Afghanistan and the toppling of Saddam Hussein may have cripped global
terrorism so badly. Without the infrastrastructure of a state sponsor, terrorism
is limited to cells of about 100 members in size in order to maintain security.
In the context of the current campaign in Iraq, the strategic importance of
places like Falluja or "holy places" is that their enclave nature allows
terrorists to grow out their networks to a larger and more potent size. Without
those sanctuaries, they would be small, clandestine hunted bands. The

argument that dismantling terrorist enclaves makes "America less safe than
it should be in a dangerous world" inverts the logic. It is allowing the growth
of terrorist enclaves that puts everyone at risk in an otherwise safe world.

Update

Here's a link to a database of terrorist incidents called,
MIPT Terrorism, via
the Neophyte Pundit.
I'll look into the site later today or this week, but it seems useful enough to
put on my blogroll.

The Way to Dusty Death

Michael
Totten examines the quagmire that never was. How did Israel achieve the
task, regarded as impossible by media analysts and many diplomats, of defeating
the Intifada? He quotes the "New Republic".

Israel's triumph over the Palestinian attempt to unravel its society is the
result of a systematic assault on terrorism that emerged only fitfully over
the past four years. The fence, initially opposed by the army and the
government, has thwarted terrorist infiltration in those areas where it has
been completed. Border towns like Hadera and Afula, which had experienced some
of the worst attacks, have been terror-free since the fence was completed in
their areas. Targeted assassinations and constant military forays into
Palestinian neighborhoods have decimated the terrorists' leadership, and
roadblocks have intercepted hundreds of bombs, some concealed in ambulances,
children's backpacks, and, most recently, a baby carriage. At every phase of
Israel's counteroffensive, skeptics have worried that attempts to suppress
terrorism would only encourage more of it.

The most remarkable thing about Israel's campaign against the Intifada was
not it's adoption of new warfighting concepts, like Europe's Human
Security Doctrine, but its reversion to the oldest method of all: winning by
fighting back. Social historians in the future, should we ever attain it, may
endlessly wonder how it was possible for Western European and liberal American
intellectuals to forget 5,000 years of military experience in favor of the
slogans, some composed facetiously, of the Peace Movement of the 1960s. However
that may be, Totten concludes that Israel is a test case, the pathfinder to
America's future in the war on terror. "Israel's present may be our future.
Best get used to it now."

The necessary corollary is if Israel's future is to America's then Palestine's is to the Islamic world's: a bleak landscape of impoverished, poorly educated people living
on a diet of fantasy: the least necessary tragedy in history. The Jihad
like the Intifada is the highroad to vacancy. But the Left encouraged Yasser
Arafat to hold out for more at every turn; solemnly assuring him by whatever
gods of historical determinism they worshipped that the Intifada was
unstoppable; the wave of the future. What they forgot to tell him was that it
was unstoppable only for so long as it wasn't stopped. To listen to the Left is
to share it's epitaph. Time to stop listening.

a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Hello

Digital
Bear Consulting has a very useful set of links to software tools in aid of
social network analysis. It's an area I discovered by accident, having
"rolled my own" link analysis software as a private utility. My
motivation was to keep track of the burgeoning network of events, persons and
other entities related to the Global War on Terror. The products listed out at
Digital Bear are far removed from my own amateurish attempts. For one thing,
they are founded on sound mathematical theory. I haven't had the time to look at
each closely, but they range from Analyst's
Notebook, a professional law enforcement and military package whose claim to
fame was helping track down Saddam Hussein at the high end to Agna
and NetVis Module, which
are freeware. There are also libraries and toolkits which can be adapted to
custom purposes. Other resources include
INSNA and its directory
of relevant software tools. Vladis
Krebs describes the motivation behind social network analysis.

Social network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships
and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers or other
information/knowledge processing entities. The nodes in the network are the
people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the
nodes. .. A method to understand networks and their participants is to
evaluate the location of actors in the network. Measuring the network location
is finding the centrality of a node. These measures help determine the
importance, or prominence, of a node in the network.

While it sounds like something that would be extraordinarily useful in the
war on terror, I suspect the actual utility of many models and the tools based
on them will be quite limited by the quality of the data and its volatility. All
the same, there was never a tool without a use and while I don't expect that
these tools are used in the field to target Zarqawi's minions scuttling
around in Iraq, the concepts of "social networks" are probably
never far from mind.

The spiritual leader of a militant group that claimed to have beheaded two
American hostages in Iraq has been killed in a U.S. airstrike, and his
Jordanian family is preparing a wake, a newspaper and Islamic clerics said
Wednesday. Sheik Abu Anas al-Shami, 35, was killed when a missile hit the car
he was traveling in on Friday in the west Baghdad suburb of Abu-Ghraib, said
the clerics, who have close ties to the family. They spoke on condition of
anonymity.

Al-Shami was a close aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the
militant group Tawhid and Jihad. The al-Qaida-linked group is blamed for some
of the biggest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters
last year, and the beheadings of foreign hostages -- including two Americans
this week.

The Sword is Mightier than the Pen

Glenn
Reynolds links to

Volokh who describes the intimidation that correspondents are filing
their stories under in Iraq.

The

New York Times reports that Reuters is upset that the CanWest newspaper
chain changed a Reuters story to describe the Al Asqa Martyrs' brigade, a
Palestinian terrorist group, as "a terrorist group":

"Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling
someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any
paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to
change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the
byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made
at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and
possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My
goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity," he
said.

In other words, Reuters must amend its copy to suit or its reporters may be
harmed. This is another aspect of asymmetrical warfare that goes unrecognized.
Terrorists are essentially free to censor news coverage or even alter it by
intimidation whereas Coalition Forces are strictly forbidden from even thinking
about it. It's similar to when gangsters would trash 19th century newspaper
offices to head off crusading editors except that today's gangsters can edit the
copy to describe themselves as 'militants' or 'activists' or 'people' and
editors have banished the words 'crusading' and especially 'crusade' from their
lexicon altogether.

John Burns of the New York Times described how he hid from Saddam's thugs in
hotel stairwells during OIF while those who towed the line or paid them off
received preferential treatment.

There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the
approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of
information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out
for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with
mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of
thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds
of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who
then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of
minders. Never mentioned terror.

In comparison with this kind of tampering  the CBS 60 Minutes
forgery scandal pales into insignificance. Terror, through intimidation, has to
some extent been able to control what Americans and Europeans are allowed to
read. Yet Reuters says, "My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our
editorial integrity". Where have we heard that before?

The Tommy Franks Statement

Buried deep in a Boston
Globe article mainly devoted to John Kerry's denunciation of President
George Bush's handling of Iraq is a riposte by retired CENTCOM Commander Tommy
Franks.

Kerry, who in October 2002 voted in favor of a congressional resolution
authorizing the war, said Bush rushed into Iraq without the backing of allies,
preparing a postwar plan, or properly equipping US forces -- ''None of which I
would have done."

''Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place
in hell," Kerry told a supportive audience assembled at New York
University, downtown from where Bush is to address the United Nations General
Assembly today. ''But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The
satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a
dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."

He blamed Bush for ''colossal failures of judgment." ''This is
stubborn incompetence," he said.

Then there's the rebuttal by Franks. The Globe quotes Franks as saying:
"General Tommy Franks, who commanded the 2002 invasion of Iraq, criticiz(ed)
Kerry directly. ''Senator Kerry's contradictions on Iraq are the wrong signal
to send to our troops on the ground, to our coalition partners, to the Iraqi
people, and to the terrorists seeking our destruction," Franks said."
But the Globe omitted the more important part of Frank's statement, whose text
can be found at FreeRepublic.

ARLINGTON, VA � Gen. Tommy Franks (Ret.) today issued the following
statement on Senator Kerry's speech today on Iraq:

"Senator Kerry's contradictions on Iraq are the wrong signal to send
to our troops on the ground, to our coalition partners, to the Iraqi people
and to the terrorists seeking our destruction. On the eve of Prime Minister
Allawi's visit to the United States, Senator Kerry today said that America and
the world are 'less secure' now that Saddam Hussein is out of power.

"The American people disagree and last December, so did Senator Kerry.
At the time he said that those who believe the world was safer with Saddam
Hussein in power 'don't have the judgment to be president.' I agree."

The Globe casts Frank's disagreements with Kerry as procedural --
"sending the wrong message" But Frank's critique goes deeper: they are
substantive disagreements with the assertion that the removal of Saddam
Hussein did not make the America and the world safer. It is a strategic
appreciation diametrically opposed to that of Senator Kerry's.

The problem with arguments from authority is that one can find citations to
suit any book. This is often the last resort of those who argue that Iraq, in
despite of statistical evidence to contrary, has trapped the US in a strategic
cul-de-sac. In that respect Tommy Franks is to those unimpeachable sources as
the critics of the 60 Minutes expose were to CBS's document experts. Not
the last word, but planters of the first seed of doubt in the Anybody-But-Bush
faith. In the end, the truth of a proposition comes not from assertions of
authority, but the thing in itself. People will judge Iraq from its effect on
their own lives and render their verdict accordingly.

Update: The Enemy in Iraq

Dan Darling has more detailed breakdown of the enemy order of battle in
Iraq. A sample:

Zarqawi's coalition

In addition to his own al-Tawhid
wal Jihad organization, Zarqawi has also formed an impressive coalition of
Iraqi and foreign Islamist groups under his direction to challenge US control
of Iraq. Ansar al-Islam is a nominal part of this coalition, but they are far
more autonomous than these others that I'm about to list because they've been
established in Iraq longer and have equal or greater clout with Zarqawi's
erstwhile allies in the IRGC. Based on what I know, Zarqawi's coalition is
made up of Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah, Jaish-e-Islami al-Iraqi, Jaish Mohammed,
Harakat al-Salafiyyah al-Jihadiyyah, Takfir wal Hijra, Kateebat al-Jihad
al-Islamiyyah, Islamic Resistance Front, Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, Kateebat
al-Mujahideen, Kateebat al-Zilzal al-Mujahid, Kateebat Salah al-Din, and Jund
al-Sham as well as the international brigades of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat
ul-Jihad-e-Islam, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

It would be good to diagram.